Kim Death Prompts North Korea Power Struggle

With an internal power struggle raging after the death of Kim Jong-il, North Korea could pose an even bigger menace to its neighbours and the world.

In the country he ruled for 17 years they called him 'Our Father', 'the Dear Leader' and the 'Great Successor To The Revolutionary Cause'.

George W Bush said his dictatorship was one part of the Axis of Evil, while films like ' Team America ' saw Hollywood mock him as a lonely misfit filled with self-pity.

We will never know exactly how Kim Jong-il saw himself, but to most of the world he was an old-fashioned tyrant - living in luxury while his people starved to death, presiding over a state that shamelessly engaged in criminal activities and threatening his neighbours with nuclear destruction.

With Kim alive, everyone knew who was in charge of North Korea's giant standing army - the fourth largest in the world - and its small, but potentially deadly nuclear capacity.

His regime repeatedly threatened to turn South Korean capital Seoul into "a sea of fire".

Last year the country's military killed four South Koreans when it shelled Yeonpyeong Island, the heaviest bombardment since the 1953 armistice that ended the fighting in the Korean War.

And his regime was also implicated in the sinking of a South Korean battleship, the Cheonan, in which 46 sailors lost their lives.

But few thought that Kim would ever launch a large-scale unprovoked attack, let alone use the nuclear weapons at his disposal.

"He remained in power for much longer than anyone expected," said Daniel Pinkston, senior analyst with the Crisis Group in Seoul.

"He realised that if there was an escalation to full-scale war they would lose, and that would be suicidal for North Korea."

Shortly after announcing Kim Jong-il's death , North Korean state television called on the country to rally around the dictator's anointed successor, his youngest son Kim Jong-un.

Kim-the-younger is still in his twenties, and the product of a Swiss boarding school education.

He bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather Kim Il-sung, the revered founder of the North Korean state, and still the country's 'Eternal President' 17 years after his death.

Kim Jong-un's only known qualification is his lineage. The crucial question is whether he will be able to control North Korea as his father did.

There may be other figures in the secretive, military-dominated state that see the transition as an opportunity to seize power.

North Korea's neighbours worry about the possibility of a drawn out leadership struggle, or a power vacuum in which it is not clear who is in charge of the country's nuclear weapons.

Even more frightening is a scenario in which one competing figure launches an attack as a show of strength.

The South Korean media has speculated that one challenger may come in the shape of Chang Sung-taek who is married to Kim Jong-il's younger sister, and is supposed to be mentoring his young nephew.

Another potential rival, say some, is General O Kuk-ryol, a childhood friend of Kim Jong-il and the man behind North Korea's lucrative production of counterfeit US "superdollars".

Then there are Kim Jong-un's two older brothers. One of them, Kim Jong-nam, was originally the chosen successor.

But he then disgraced himself by travelling to Japan with his family on a counterfeit Dominican Republic passport in 2001.

He told officials there he wanted to visit Disneyland, before being publicly deported in front of massed television cameras.

He now lives the life of a playboy in the Chinese city of Macau, occasionally giving impromptu interviews to Japanese and South Korean journalists.

But like everything else in the secretive Stalinist dictatorship, North Korea's succession is shrouded in mystery.

"The inner circle is really impenetrable," said Barbara Demick, author of a recent book about the country.

"They're all protecting each other. Whether they like each other or not, they know that if they hang, they will be hanged together."